MUTEK Day Three. The last discussion panel of the week attempts to address nothing less than the question of what electronic music is and where it is headed. This is such a ridiculously complex and involved piece of subject matter, and with the brainpower in attendance today, the discussion could have easily gone on for the entire week. That is no exaggeration. The entire discussion demonstrated that the question of "what is electronic music?" is nearly an unsolvable problem, at least in the sense that across-the-spectrum agreement appears to be an impossibility. But the input of suggestions from individuals is certainly welcome and is actively encouraged.
As you'd expect, software is a recurring subject. Recombinant Media Labs' Naut Humon wittily questions whether a gig these days is "music or a software demonstration". Tim Hecker, aka Jetone, states that electronic music used to be an elitist domain. It used to be that only hands-on electronic gurus with money to burn could make this music. Now, anyone with a computer and about a grand for the software can get involved. Throughout the afternoon, it is extraordinarily tricky to get the sense of whether anyone here believes this is a positive or negative thing.
Yet it's clearly not that accessible, since the most common criticism of electronic music is that it's, um, not human, it's mechanized, there's no soul. A lengthy discussion about expressionism vs predeterminism takes place. It's essentially an extension of Naut's previous comment, i.e. who is making the damned music? Is software just doing it's own thing, or is there any evidence that the artist has spent a great deal of time learning about the software and exploited it in a wholly original way?
Matt Herbert, aka Radioboy, feels that electronic music must become a "sharing experience" in order to gain greater acceptance. Performances must have an intimacy similar to people singing along while somebody plays an acoustic guitar. In this way, everyone feels as though they're part of the music. In my thoughts, I recall Janek Schaeffer's performance from last night as a possible candidate for a "sharing experience".
Philip Sherbourne (doing another fine job as chair of this emotionally charged session) makes comparisons with rock music, specifically punk. When punk happened, everyone and their uncle started a band, and most of them were crap. The cream rose to the top, their music evolved, and everyone else quickly ran their course. If exactly the same thing is happening with electronic music right now, then should we be worried about it? It's an excellent point that I wish had been given more weight. Contemporary performers can learn a lot from past trends, but there are also some unfair dichotomies between rock and electronic music. For instance, I've never understood how Oasis can climb onstage, stand around doing absolutely nothing, and it's called a "transcendent rock performance". But if someone with a laptop is onstage doing equal amounts of nothing, then it's boring. Sherbourne is on to something: some of the "criteria" (What is a "live" performance? Who can make music and what "should" their skills be?) must be revised, but others need not be.
This session runs more than half an hour overtime, which is expected when the people present are discussing their livelihoods, and feel the need to defend their reputations even when they're not at stake.
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Closely tied into this is the question of who attends MUTEK, for the wider one casts the net over what is posited as "electronic" and therefore "appropriate" for MUTEK (whatever that means), the greater the variety of people that will attend, which in turn is a prime indicator of the mood or vibe of MUTEK events, which is key in defining what MUTEK "is". One can interpret this as literally as one likes, since if it is indeed impossible or unwarranted to define electronic music, the same should apply to MUTEK itself. Last week, I considered the issue of the MUTEK attendees at some length, so I won't attempt to address the whys once more. I will attempt to interpret the whats, though. Bear with me …
Xenofonex and Capsule blend their performances together, which is sensible since it involves the same people. The first part is warm, luscious ambient and then the schizophrenic reaction takes place as we switch to a mixture of beats, electronic effects and (live!) heavily treated guitar. A bit too prog and middling (guitar solos? Why?) but huge, cherry-topped kudos to anyone incorporating guitar effects into dance music.
Camp offers a fun pack of treats, from Chain Reaction-esque minimalism to ambient to pounding beats. As he rocks the place, yet people stand around, I notice that things have changed. The crowd has changed. I peer out from my spot behind the stage and look closely - lots upon lots of people wearing black clothing. I look around me - same thing. Lord, the VROMB crowd has eaten the MUTEK crowd.
Worlds are colliding both musically and socially. Not only does VROMB's harsh and noisy style clash with much of the material at MUTEK, there is very little overlap between the fan bases. To the MUTEK crowd, VROMB is "emerging", but he is already a big name in industrial circles. And he lets loose with a startling forty minute set of rhythmic noise, steamrolling bass vibrations, and controlled chaos. The industrial fans eat it up, I could tell because some of them were tapping their feet. He leaves to deservedly thunderous applause, since he just blew away 90% of what MUTEK has to offer.
Now it's time to get serious. The afternoons and evenings of the snooty, polite applause for obscure, willfully uncommercial artists that real clubgoers don't give a fuck about are over and done with. All week, there's been a heavyweight fight kind of buildup to this night at Metropolis. The star power involved is formidable. It's the bittersweet homecoming for Montreal's biggest minimal tech-house star, Akufen, and a celebration of his newly released album "My Way" on the prominent Force Inc. label. And most importantly, MUTEK attempts to fill a huge venue, the sleek Metropolis, and prove that she can hang with the big boys and draw sizeable crowds and money.
Steve Beaupre fires up the sound system with quality bass-heavy beats, leading into the set by one of Toronto's finest, Repair. They begin on a slightly rough footing, playing unspectacular house music with the ethereal-voiced Dawn Lewis. The Thibedeaus don't get settled in until Dawn leaves the stage, then they hit fourth gear running with the sublime, deep and minimal tech-house which is their forte. Adopting these grooves to include choruses and tinkly keyboard melodies is fine (hey, they can do what they want), but it's a shame to be spending some of their time with it when they can make world-class material in a different genre. Repair end up getting what they deserve - a room full of people dancing passionately to their music.
Now sufficiently warmed up, Copacabannark look to be out to destroy the mood despite the execution of yet another Wonderful Idea I Wish I'd Thought of Myself. In Copacabannark's world, the insanely hard, jacking house beat is tweaked every twenty seconds and rhythm is frequently and rudely interrupted by piercing high-frequency squalls and bombastic blankets of grey noise. Against all odds, the crowd totally eats it up, popping like five-day old pimples for each of these bizarre breaks, thus providing MUTEK 2002 with its very own Philippe Cam moment. It helps that Cabanne plays the part of Ralf from the Muppet Show, furiously headbanging away as he causes eardrums to break for the umpteenth time with noise squall #374A.
I close my eyes and open them repeatedly, but each time I see the same thing. I see performers on a stage, set back from the crowd and surrounded by mysterious dry ice smoke in front of an adoring audience that cheers them like rock stars. In short, it feels like an ordinary club gig. During the year and a half of MUTEKs I've attended, the artists performed on a centrally located stage and freely wandered and danced among everyone else. That's how conferences and conventions function. The speakers/artists are really no different than those who hear them. The opportunities to mingle allow people to freely share ideas, stories, experiences, and technologies. What we have here is a gaggle of club kids who came to dance and then go home.
But they also came to gaze at musical stars, which is why the front of the room becomes jam packed for Radioboy. Matt Herbert's done a zillion different genres during his lengthy career and most of them contain more creative worth than what is featured during this Radioboy performance. But who cares? The music is chaos. It's the soundtrack for him to get on stage and destroy the merchandise from companies and institutions he despises. He doesn't put his soul into writing melodies, he puts it into a path of destruction and gleefully samples the results. This is an unabashedly brilliant bit of politicizing. He is willing to partially sabotage his own music, his livelihood, to leave extra energy for the spectacle of annihilating these cancer-ridden wares. He is even willing to economically support companies like Starbucks and Gap in order to do these performances, all in the name of a greater good. He strikes ridiculous yet proudly triumphant poses such as a militaristic stance while staring intensely at the audience and raising a Big Mac over his head. The point is emphatically made, but damned if I know exactly what it is. It was unspeakably cool though, and I cheer wildly just like everybody else. Regardless if we don't feel as strong as him about the corporate evil, he's up there wreaking havoc in a matter that we'd all jump at the chance to do, for it looks like so much bloody fun. And if, in the course of observing this fun, one is made aware that Nike and Disney are corporate behemoths with questionable politics and business practices, then Herbert's accomplished everything he could have realistically hoped for.
The place doesn't exactly go wild for Akufen, except at the very front nearest the stage. I notice that there is a disproportionate number of musical artist, journalists and generalized Wednesday/Thursday MUTEK milieu. The rest of the floor dances politely, but without serious conviction. Akufen is preaching to the converted. As he gets deeper into his set, this vibe spreads until everyone is well and truly into until burning out near the end. Is this because 90% of those at Metropolis tonight haven't been taken in by the buzz from a series of acclaimed vinyl releases? It is a formidable task to hype a new CD cold, without that year of anticipation from the vinyl.
Due to hype burnout and exhaustion due to the late hour, most don't stay to hear Hakan Lidbo. A massive second wind develops, the dancefloor gets madder than at any previous point in the evening, and the clubgoers, those who supposedly only came for the dancing, feel Lidbo's beats in their bones. The building shakes with some of the most powerful bass I've ever heard, and I can't help but dance until it's all over.
Thursday, May 30, 2002
MUTEK Day Two. The panel discussions are held in a lecture hall at the Goethe Institute. They're chaired by journalist Philip Sherbourne, who proves his mettle as chair over the next two days by being extremely eloquent and inquisitive, and always keeping the discussion moving fluidly.
The purpose of these events, as I see it (besides making MUTEK's activities more interdisciplinary) is to assemble a great number of differing opinions in one room so that all in attendance are exposed to as many ideas as possible. It becomes readily apparent that there are few things that the panel or the audience members can agree on. That's not to say that the discourse is combative, actually it's the complete opposite, as the speakers from the panel and the audience speak in a refined and academic manner. But I'd expect nothing less. Firstly, many of the attendants are artists, journalists, or label reps, so they naturally spend a non-trivial amount of time thinking about these issues during their daily lives. But more crucially, "electronic" music fits a substantial number of styles and definitions under its umbrella, which in turn draws a gigantic hodgepodge of people and opinions to MUTEK events. So never mind looking for agreement on a definition of what electronic music is or what it should be (stay tuned for tomorrow's panel). People haven't just wandered in for this afternoon's event, they've brought their axe to grind.
I'm no different. Yesterday, I wrote about how easy it is to find information and articles about MUTEK in the Montreal print media. The writing "style" of these articles was indistinguishable from the articles covering any other type of music. That doesn't surprise me in the least because they were "general" entertainment publications. This year, there's a small mural at SAT beside the merchandise booth made up of print articles about MUTEK and its performers. They're all from the "general" media. Rupert Bottenberg, the music editor for the weekly Montreal Mirror, is himself a big fan of electronic music, but admits that when writing about it in his paper, it's necessary to cater to the "lowest common denominator", i.e. readers who likely know almost nothing about the scene. At least, that's how I interpret the phrase "lowest common denominator".
If you open a magazine such as Grooves or XLR8R, there's more that separates it from the writing in the Montreal Mirror than just name dropping. Reviews are written with long, complicated sentences where adjectives are more than comfortable to roost at their will. There is a lot of effort in precisely describing what the music sounds like, just as in the main articles, artists are precise, sometimes absurdly so, about what their music sounds like and what their composing philosophies are. It is a far denser form of journalism, and it's a style that I am completely clumsy in trying to emulate, so I don't bother trying anymore. But do magazines like Grooves dictate the "style" of electronic music journalism? Does electronic music need its own journalism style? I enjoy electronic-centric magazines, but personally, I find articles in the general publications to be livelier. And it's not merely due to the simpler language, it's because there's a stronger emphasis on storytelling and personalities rather than the hows and whats of the music making process.
It's a journalist's job to dig beneath the surface and learn something new about a subject. The panel agrees that readers don't want to hear only about the music, they want to know what happens before the music is made. They want to know, points out journalist Heath Hignight, why if you gather a bunch of electronic musicians in a room (like this very spot) and ask about their pets, you'll find that there are "many cats but not as many dogs".
There is much discussion about how artists behave during interviews. The journalists agree that the people making the best music may be a terrible interview, and vice versa. Undoubtedly, these impressions can affect the way an artist is marketed. However, the culture tends to breed reserved geniuses who make music in their bedrooms, instead of those who dream of being flashy rock stars. Often, touring is a much more effective promotion method. "Touring is everything", states Force Inc.'s Jon Berry. Touring gets local press, so even if the CD is over a year old, it becomes relevant again.
CBC's Patti Schmidt feels that the "vigilantly curious" rave kids will withdraw from clubs and buy electronic music. That's as fine an opinion on the subject as I've ever heard.
I grind my axe on the subject of vinyl. Does the panel feel that the accessibility of the vinyl format is a major issue? If an artist releases most, or all of his or her music on vinyl, how do you market it to people who don't own record players? Jon says that the do send white labels to journalists, but the real problem is the turnaround of the magazines. Journalists can write about vinyl releases, but by the time the review gets printed, the record is no longer in the stores. He's certainly correct, but I don't feel that the panel (or anyone else I talked to on the subject, for that matter) feels that vinyl is a major issue. Just wait for the tour or the CD and let the publicity from them take over.
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I'm somewhat dismayed to find that SAT's free Emergence series has used a different layout this year, putting the artists on the stage rather than in a cramped corner at the front. I liked last yea's setup because having the artist physically marginalized created a novel "happy hour" feel, with the beer and the socializing taking center stage with musical accompaniment just happening to be provided by cutting edge artists. It soon becomes apparent that at least one reason for the metamorphosis is the need to use the video equipment. This afternoon becomes a meshing of the visual with the aural, on par with anything from the previous night at Ex-Centris.
Ten seconds into the Monolake-Deadbeat webjam and my eyes are transfixed on the video screen, my ears already taking delight in the riches pounding forth from the nearby speakers. Their music-making interface is displayed for all to see, with the various components (bass, clicks, beats, metallic sounds, etc.) laid out into easy-to-follow horizontal eight bar sections. To add a note or sound to the music, all one does is point and click at the desired spot in one of the stanzas. Scott's additions are in blue, Rob's are in red. All is composed on the fly. In real time. And following it is as easy as watching the bouncing ball - white dots sweep through the stanzas indicating the position in the music.
It appears so simple and so much fun. And by its nature, unpredictable since one's partner in composition is thousands of miles away. Thus, Deadbeat finds out what Monolake is doing at exactly the same time as everyone else in SAT. And therefore, it is challenging as well. A veritable subplot to the performance consisted of following Deadbeat's mouse around the screen as he contemplated his next move.
Oh yeah, all this sounded exactly like Deadbeat jamming with Monolake. What did you expect?
They stop after thirty minutes and I'm exhausted. My eyes are tired from keeping up with the chess game on the big screens. The next two artists also project their wares on the video screens, but knowing next to nothing about gear, I find it more difficult to follow. Alexandre Burton has an resembles an interface electronics setup, that is, a series of boxes and meters linked together by straight coloured lines. His rumbling, out-worldly ambient music begins with one such circuit and begins to grow into a bustling colony of circuits via the copy and paste. Not only is he composing music, he's composing art. Eventually, the screen and speakers are abuzz with activity, until his computer crashes and truncates the performance.
Some people can watch this stuff and talk gear, but I expect that most are ignorant like me. But watching the music get made removes the mystery, and dare I say it, fear of the unknown that can be experienced when confronted with an otherwise well-adjusted young male making a large room shake and quiver via a mere click of a mouse. This type of full disclosure can only breed respect for the tasks the artists perform, and I'd even go so far to say that it adds the face to the prototypical "faceless" electronic artist. However, the Deadbeat/Monolake show has something else going for it that the others do not - a palpable DIY aesthetic. Yes, it had a conventional 4/4 beat structure, which is intuitively easier to follow than anything beatless or abstract, but I couldn't stop thinking "gee I'd like to try that, and I think I already understand how it all works". That sort of thinking is very punk. It inspires people to create their own music or at least glean enjoyment from it, both of which they previously had been too reluctant or intimidated to do. Wanna market electronic music to a general audience? Let them watch these performances. Remove some of the mystery. Open up.
I'm hopelessly lost trying to comprehend Zach Settel's x-y graphs and clueless as to when he cues the hip-hop beats, but duul_drv soon calm me down with their mellow ambience and comforting visuals (coloured dots, pale sunset hues, etc.). At this point, the "show" starts competing with the "background music to the after-work" vibe and the latter wins out as the performance goes on. But I suspect that dull_drv expect it that way. Their music is so calming and their mannerisms so subdued. Eventually, I give in.
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The evening brings me back to Ex-Centris, the building with the hardwood floor so immaculate you can eat off it. Although nobody does, sitting, lounging, and prone position are again in abundance.
A detailed description can't capture the mood here tonight, or at least I am not the person to provide the appropriate words. Suffice to say that the performances were deeply rooted in avant-garde and musique concrete, found sounds and echoes are thick in the air, and each performance lasts several tens of minutes yet seems to pass in five. That is, except for local talent Ghislain Poirier, who may have wandered into the wrong venue. Yes, his unconventional bears and thick layers of echo are enjoyable, but he has little in common with the other three artists.
Helen of Troy does something I've always longed to see: repetitive sampling. He plays the violin, samples a few notes, plays some more, samples that, builds a massive chorus of violins and continues sampling and sampling his samples and sampling that … until the timbre decays into an eerie wail, recalling the hard-to-find layers deep beneath the heavy guitar gauze on MBV records …
Stephan Mathieu, flanked by a glacially chameleonic video screen, soothes me to the core with drones resembling a cross between chimes and choruses, and electroacoustic hum which is so calming, I stretch myself out (never feeling tired for a moment) and reveled in putting my ear to the floor and listening to it purr.
Janek Schaeffer has set up his gear on an ankle high platform and the crowd gathers around him like folkies with guitars around a campfire. I mark out every time he touches his two-arm turntable, marveling at the rustic homebuilt instrument and try to pick out the vinyl sounds within the mix. It's difficult at times, but it's remarkable how much the mood of the music changes with a simple twist of the pitch knob - from dreary to spellbindingly intense with just a slight turn. He commands just as much attention after his performance as during, for people gather around, eager to study his gear and ask questions. Thus, he holds court, patiently answering all questions asked of him. He tells me that he cuts his vinyl in the old-school fashion by feeding back sounds through a grammophone and using the stylus as a cutting tool. He demonstrates how the arm slips from groove to groove, which is essentially a random occurance but can be influenced by changing speed or putting objects on the record. I watch as he places a double A battery on the record, lets it go, and observe how the arm hits the battery, causing the needle to jump to a different groove, each time a different groove for each rotation, turn after turn, again and again. It's hypnotizing, much like watching a fire.
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Some of the star power has been subtracted from the nights' events at SAT, as "Gescom DJ's" were a late scratch. Skam, the label, may not be as mythic as Gescom, the artists, aka Autechre (+various others?) not-so-secret side project. With the DJ's absence, the question of who exactly would have shown up remains a mystery. Yeah, I could probably find out if I wanted to, but I'd prefer not to. I want to preserve the myth and not risk disconsolation in the answer.
Thus, this night has no real theme or direction, since there's no Skam doubleheader, so it's now a random collection of artists. Plus, none of them are featured on the MUTEK compilation. The combination of these likely relegates the night to great anonymity, for without the "theme" and the omission from the prime historical record (the CD compo), this night will be remembered as inessential.
It starts with yet another 80's revue, with Solvent vs Lowfish bringing back memories of primordial electro and EBM. It continues with the mythical Bola, whose appearance does not disappoint. When one goes years between releases and live gigs, you'd expect nothing less than all the stops pulled out. And he complies by mainly avoiding the blippy curiosities that have surfaced on Skam lately, and covering his songs in the lush ambience that he's best known for. This is accompanied by a gorgeous set of visuals, treading the metallic roboticism meets organic naturalism of Warp's "Motion" video from so many years ago, a concept which holds up brilliantly today. The organic side, which I've found to be lacking in recent Skam releases, holds up its end during the newer, funkier numbers.
Without Gescom, the vibe is completely lost following Bola's performance and many don't bother to stick around for Ensemble. His tendency to blow apart a perfectly good beat of serene moment with enough noise to make Merzbow proud keeps people flowing toward the doors. I am of the opposite opinion. The noise is a welcome part of his set, and a hearty middle finger to those who can't be troubled to hear it.
The purpose of these events, as I see it (besides making MUTEK's activities more interdisciplinary) is to assemble a great number of differing opinions in one room so that all in attendance are exposed to as many ideas as possible. It becomes readily apparent that there are few things that the panel or the audience members can agree on. That's not to say that the discourse is combative, actually it's the complete opposite, as the speakers from the panel and the audience speak in a refined and academic manner. But I'd expect nothing less. Firstly, many of the attendants are artists, journalists, or label reps, so they naturally spend a non-trivial amount of time thinking about these issues during their daily lives. But more crucially, "electronic" music fits a substantial number of styles and definitions under its umbrella, which in turn draws a gigantic hodgepodge of people and opinions to MUTEK events. So never mind looking for agreement on a definition of what electronic music is or what it should be (stay tuned for tomorrow's panel). People haven't just wandered in for this afternoon's event, they've brought their axe to grind.
I'm no different. Yesterday, I wrote about how easy it is to find information and articles about MUTEK in the Montreal print media. The writing "style" of these articles was indistinguishable from the articles covering any other type of music. That doesn't surprise me in the least because they were "general" entertainment publications. This year, there's a small mural at SAT beside the merchandise booth made up of print articles about MUTEK and its performers. They're all from the "general" media. Rupert Bottenberg, the music editor for the weekly Montreal Mirror, is himself a big fan of electronic music, but admits that when writing about it in his paper, it's necessary to cater to the "lowest common denominator", i.e. readers who likely know almost nothing about the scene. At least, that's how I interpret the phrase "lowest common denominator".
If you open a magazine such as Grooves or XLR8R, there's more that separates it from the writing in the Montreal Mirror than just name dropping. Reviews are written with long, complicated sentences where adjectives are more than comfortable to roost at their will. There is a lot of effort in precisely describing what the music sounds like, just as in the main articles, artists are precise, sometimes absurdly so, about what their music sounds like and what their composing philosophies are. It is a far denser form of journalism, and it's a style that I am completely clumsy in trying to emulate, so I don't bother trying anymore. But do magazines like Grooves dictate the "style" of electronic music journalism? Does electronic music need its own journalism style? I enjoy electronic-centric magazines, but personally, I find articles in the general publications to be livelier. And it's not merely due to the simpler language, it's because there's a stronger emphasis on storytelling and personalities rather than the hows and whats of the music making process.
It's a journalist's job to dig beneath the surface and learn something new about a subject. The panel agrees that readers don't want to hear only about the music, they want to know what happens before the music is made. They want to know, points out journalist Heath Hignight, why if you gather a bunch of electronic musicians in a room (like this very spot) and ask about their pets, you'll find that there are "many cats but not as many dogs".
There is much discussion about how artists behave during interviews. The journalists agree that the people making the best music may be a terrible interview, and vice versa. Undoubtedly, these impressions can affect the way an artist is marketed. However, the culture tends to breed reserved geniuses who make music in their bedrooms, instead of those who dream of being flashy rock stars. Often, touring is a much more effective promotion method. "Touring is everything", states Force Inc.'s Jon Berry. Touring gets local press, so even if the CD is over a year old, it becomes relevant again.
CBC's Patti Schmidt feels that the "vigilantly curious" rave kids will withdraw from clubs and buy electronic music. That's as fine an opinion on the subject as I've ever heard.
I grind my axe on the subject of vinyl. Does the panel feel that the accessibility of the vinyl format is a major issue? If an artist releases most, or all of his or her music on vinyl, how do you market it to people who don't own record players? Jon says that the do send white labels to journalists, but the real problem is the turnaround of the magazines. Journalists can write about vinyl releases, but by the time the review gets printed, the record is no longer in the stores. He's certainly correct, but I don't feel that the panel (or anyone else I talked to on the subject, for that matter) feels that vinyl is a major issue. Just wait for the tour or the CD and let the publicity from them take over.
-----------
I'm somewhat dismayed to find that SAT's free Emergence series has used a different layout this year, putting the artists on the stage rather than in a cramped corner at the front. I liked last yea's setup because having the artist physically marginalized created a novel "happy hour" feel, with the beer and the socializing taking center stage with musical accompaniment just happening to be provided by cutting edge artists. It soon becomes apparent that at least one reason for the metamorphosis is the need to use the video equipment. This afternoon becomes a meshing of the visual with the aural, on par with anything from the previous night at Ex-Centris.
Ten seconds into the Monolake-Deadbeat webjam and my eyes are transfixed on the video screen, my ears already taking delight in the riches pounding forth from the nearby speakers. Their music-making interface is displayed for all to see, with the various components (bass, clicks, beats, metallic sounds, etc.) laid out into easy-to-follow horizontal eight bar sections. To add a note or sound to the music, all one does is point and click at the desired spot in one of the stanzas. Scott's additions are in blue, Rob's are in red. All is composed on the fly. In real time. And following it is as easy as watching the bouncing ball - white dots sweep through the stanzas indicating the position in the music.
It appears so simple and so much fun. And by its nature, unpredictable since one's partner in composition is thousands of miles away. Thus, Deadbeat finds out what Monolake is doing at exactly the same time as everyone else in SAT. And therefore, it is challenging as well. A veritable subplot to the performance consisted of following Deadbeat's mouse around the screen as he contemplated his next move.
Oh yeah, all this sounded exactly like Deadbeat jamming with Monolake. What did you expect?
They stop after thirty minutes and I'm exhausted. My eyes are tired from keeping up with the chess game on the big screens. The next two artists also project their wares on the video screens, but knowing next to nothing about gear, I find it more difficult to follow. Alexandre Burton has an resembles an interface electronics setup, that is, a series of boxes and meters linked together by straight coloured lines. His rumbling, out-worldly ambient music begins with one such circuit and begins to grow into a bustling colony of circuits via the copy and paste. Not only is he composing music, he's composing art. Eventually, the screen and speakers are abuzz with activity, until his computer crashes and truncates the performance.
Some people can watch this stuff and talk gear, but I expect that most are ignorant like me. But watching the music get made removes the mystery, and dare I say it, fear of the unknown that can be experienced when confronted with an otherwise well-adjusted young male making a large room shake and quiver via a mere click of a mouse. This type of full disclosure can only breed respect for the tasks the artists perform, and I'd even go so far to say that it adds the face to the prototypical "faceless" electronic artist. However, the Deadbeat/Monolake show has something else going for it that the others do not - a palpable DIY aesthetic. Yes, it had a conventional 4/4 beat structure, which is intuitively easier to follow than anything beatless or abstract, but I couldn't stop thinking "gee I'd like to try that, and I think I already understand how it all works". That sort of thinking is very punk. It inspires people to create their own music or at least glean enjoyment from it, both of which they previously had been too reluctant or intimidated to do. Wanna market electronic music to a general audience? Let them watch these performances. Remove some of the mystery. Open up.
I'm hopelessly lost trying to comprehend Zach Settel's x-y graphs and clueless as to when he cues the hip-hop beats, but duul_drv soon calm me down with their mellow ambience and comforting visuals (coloured dots, pale sunset hues, etc.). At this point, the "show" starts competing with the "background music to the after-work" vibe and the latter wins out as the performance goes on. But I suspect that dull_drv expect it that way. Their music is so calming and their mannerisms so subdued. Eventually, I give in.
-----------
The evening brings me back to Ex-Centris, the building with the hardwood floor so immaculate you can eat off it. Although nobody does, sitting, lounging, and prone position are again in abundance.
A detailed description can't capture the mood here tonight, or at least I am not the person to provide the appropriate words. Suffice to say that the performances were deeply rooted in avant-garde and musique concrete, found sounds and echoes are thick in the air, and each performance lasts several tens of minutes yet seems to pass in five. That is, except for local talent Ghislain Poirier, who may have wandered into the wrong venue. Yes, his unconventional bears and thick layers of echo are enjoyable, but he has little in common with the other three artists.
Helen of Troy does something I've always longed to see: repetitive sampling. He plays the violin, samples a few notes, plays some more, samples that, builds a massive chorus of violins and continues sampling and sampling his samples and sampling that … until the timbre decays into an eerie wail, recalling the hard-to-find layers deep beneath the heavy guitar gauze on MBV records …
Stephan Mathieu, flanked by a glacially chameleonic video screen, soothes me to the core with drones resembling a cross between chimes and choruses, and electroacoustic hum which is so calming, I stretch myself out (never feeling tired for a moment) and reveled in putting my ear to the floor and listening to it purr.
Janek Schaeffer has set up his gear on an ankle high platform and the crowd gathers around him like folkies with guitars around a campfire. I mark out every time he touches his two-arm turntable, marveling at the rustic homebuilt instrument and try to pick out the vinyl sounds within the mix. It's difficult at times, but it's remarkable how much the mood of the music changes with a simple twist of the pitch knob - from dreary to spellbindingly intense with just a slight turn. He commands just as much attention after his performance as during, for people gather around, eager to study his gear and ask questions. Thus, he holds court, patiently answering all questions asked of him. He tells me that he cuts his vinyl in the old-school fashion by feeding back sounds through a grammophone and using the stylus as a cutting tool. He demonstrates how the arm slips from groove to groove, which is essentially a random occurance but can be influenced by changing speed or putting objects on the record. I watch as he places a double A battery on the record, lets it go, and observe how the arm hits the battery, causing the needle to jump to a different groove, each time a different groove for each rotation, turn after turn, again and again. It's hypnotizing, much like watching a fire.
----------
Some of the star power has been subtracted from the nights' events at SAT, as "Gescom DJ's" were a late scratch. Skam, the label, may not be as mythic as Gescom, the artists, aka Autechre (+various others?) not-so-secret side project. With the DJ's absence, the question of who exactly would have shown up remains a mystery. Yeah, I could probably find out if I wanted to, but I'd prefer not to. I want to preserve the myth and not risk disconsolation in the answer.
Thus, this night has no real theme or direction, since there's no Skam doubleheader, so it's now a random collection of artists. Plus, none of them are featured on the MUTEK compilation. The combination of these likely relegates the night to great anonymity, for without the "theme" and the omission from the prime historical record (the CD compo), this night will be remembered as inessential.
It starts with yet another 80's revue, with Solvent vs Lowfish bringing back memories of primordial electro and EBM. It continues with the mythical Bola, whose appearance does not disappoint. When one goes years between releases and live gigs, you'd expect nothing less than all the stops pulled out. And he complies by mainly avoiding the blippy curiosities that have surfaced on Skam lately, and covering his songs in the lush ambience that he's best known for. This is accompanied by a gorgeous set of visuals, treading the metallic roboticism meets organic naturalism of Warp's "Motion" video from so many years ago, a concept which holds up brilliantly today. The organic side, which I've found to be lacking in recent Skam releases, holds up its end during the newer, funkier numbers.
Without Gescom, the vibe is completely lost following Bola's performance and many don't bother to stick around for Ensemble. His tendency to blow apart a perfectly good beat of serene moment with enough noise to make Merzbow proud keeps people flowing toward the doors. I am of the opposite opinion. The noise is a welcome part of his set, and a hearty middle finger to those who can't be troubled to hear it.
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
From my MUTEK notes, posted as fast I can find the time to type them into the computer:
MUTEK Day One. This festival has approximately doubled in size each year it's been held. That's an enviable track record for a festival, stock portfolio, or local small business, let alone an event within the notoriously difficult-to-market underground electronic scene. Explaining this popularity surge can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. Simple - the tremendous reputation gained by MUTEK in the last two years has created a strong word of mouth buzz. It's retained its underground cred and stayed true to those roots as the hordes have amassed in larger and larger numbers.
Complicated - why does this reputation spread in the way that it does? Whatever people's reasons for wanting to see the North American debut of SND, how does one retain their long-term interest, and perhaps even more importantly, their money?
Coincidentally enough, MUTEK has put together a discussion panel for these very subjects. The "intersection" portion of the festival gathers panels of professionals in the field to discuss a variety of pertinent topics. The marketability issue, for me, is at least partly a case of "well, duh". I've been in Montreal for three hours and I've already seen print articles about MUTEK in "La Presse" and "Ici". As another example, CBC Radio's Patti Schmidt has been caning the festival for some time now (she is also sitting on one of the panels). This leads us to the decidedly non-shocking conclusion that if you want to market electronic music, write about the stuff in the paper and talk about it on the radio, just as you'd do with any other type of music.
In "Ici", MUTEK founder Alain Mongeau explains his "2+2+1" method for planning the schedule during each of the festival's three years. The first two days focus of experimental music, the second two are for more dancefloor-friendly material, and the final day is "dessert" - a fun evening of crowd-shaking eclecticism. The experimental shows themselves are held in an experimental venue, Ex-Centris, a building more reminiscent of an art museum than a dance hall. Socializing plays a big role in this festival. One can not ignore that MUTEK succeeds in portraying non-ambient music as background fodder for all occasions through its "happy hour" afternoon shows at SAT and its conference reception décor preceding these shows at Ex-Centris.
The show takes place in a lecture hall/meeting/ballroom, which is empty except for the sound equipment, soft lighting, and immaculate pale hardwood floors. They're immaculate enough for almost everyone to sit, lie, and recline on them; and this is the scene that greets MUTEK's first performer, Winnipeg's vitaminsforyou. There's considerable debt paid to Boards of Canada, but also many moments of icy serenity that pay their debt to the bitterly cold Winnipeg winters. I'm picturing snow squalls much in the way that people imagine the Icelandic tundra in Sigur Ros' music.
I'm at least a year behind the times with SND's music, so I was coloured surprised when they didn't launch into an ode to MUTEK 2000 - all clicks and cuts, all the time. Rather, they play highly simplistic beat-driven sound tracks. The beat is there, it may be irregular and there may be the occasional pop and whiz and reverberating high-pitched sound, but not much else. In addition, various sound effects peek through -- metallic, unnerving noises - yet overall, this music is strangely funky. I could listen to it all night.
But that ends the more conventional portion of the evening, as the next two artists are true to the multimedia aspirations of MUTEK. And due to the visual nature of the performances, it is quite difficult to describe. I doubt, however, that I'd want to hear Dioxyde's music separate from the visuals or vice versa. Besides, it would defeat the purpose since their "LoeeFrek" software is designed to produce images that react in real time to the music. The audio is a series of random crackles and rumblings, cut and pasted and looped together in lightning quick fashion. The visual is presented in three parts, each part representing a dimension of space, as the collections of dots begin by forming lines, then move on to shapes, and finally solids. On a plain black screen, the white dots pulse, shake, are pulled apart and drawn together like model imploding and exploding galaxies. It's fascinating, but after an hour ot it, it becomes too anodyne to continue holding my focus. As I'm thinking that, I'm jolted back to full attention by brazen bass notes, as the figures on screen practically explode into a frenzy of patterns completely unrecognizable from their original shapes. I would have hoped for more of this chaos.
My mind is read once more, this time by Mens/Koolwyk. Their performance is a continuum of anxiety and disorientation courtesy of a deep surge of rhythmic noise along with haywire flashes of coloured lines on the big screen, like a TV test pattern gone bonkers. (Un)fortunately, technical difficulty with the projector delayed the start of Mens/Koolwyk's performance, causing many people to leave in frustration and miss out of this brainwashing. The IDM pounding and the subdued high-frequency patterns aren't lobotomizing enough by themselves. It's the icing on top, the wild visuals, that kicks free the final fingers that hold off the descent into madness. It's so intense that I frequently need to look away, and after one such instance the performance ended abruptly, leaving me to wander off, dazed , in the drizzling rain, en route to SAT.
--------
It's electro-pop night at SAT, which is dessert in my book, particularly after the experience from the previous three hours. I hear the synth beat throb of Hellothisisalex as I'm coming up the street, but that's the extent of it, for as I'm walking in the door, they're waving goodbye. The show running late at Ex-Centris is the reason for the mistiming but it's all for the best because I doubt I could take too much of the lightweight stuff in one evening. Nova Huta and Felix Kubin are almost interchangeable except that the former begins with a ten minute monologue about the "uncle" who bequeathed him his first Casio keyboard and all his melodies, and the latter wears shiny clothing and features a funkier bottom end to his music. Otherwise, they both dance around joyfully, share the same equipment, and party like it's 1982. Unlike Closer Musik from last year, who approached retrofuturism with a keen ear for streamlined, minimal composition, Huta and Kubin are only about three minute pop songs. Which is fine in controlled doses.
MUTEK Day One. This festival has approximately doubled in size each year it's been held. That's an enviable track record for a festival, stock portfolio, or local small business, let alone an event within the notoriously difficult-to-market underground electronic scene. Explaining this popularity surge can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. Simple - the tremendous reputation gained by MUTEK in the last two years has created a strong word of mouth buzz. It's retained its underground cred and stayed true to those roots as the hordes have amassed in larger and larger numbers.
Complicated - why does this reputation spread in the way that it does? Whatever people's reasons for wanting to see the North American debut of SND, how does one retain their long-term interest, and perhaps even more importantly, their money?
Coincidentally enough, MUTEK has put together a discussion panel for these very subjects. The "intersection" portion of the festival gathers panels of professionals in the field to discuss a variety of pertinent topics. The marketability issue, for me, is at least partly a case of "well, duh". I've been in Montreal for three hours and I've already seen print articles about MUTEK in "La Presse" and "Ici". As another example, CBC Radio's Patti Schmidt has been caning the festival for some time now (she is also sitting on one of the panels). This leads us to the decidedly non-shocking conclusion that if you want to market electronic music, write about the stuff in the paper and talk about it on the radio, just as you'd do with any other type of music.
In "Ici", MUTEK founder Alain Mongeau explains his "2+2+1" method for planning the schedule during each of the festival's three years. The first two days focus of experimental music, the second two are for more dancefloor-friendly material, and the final day is "dessert" - a fun evening of crowd-shaking eclecticism. The experimental shows themselves are held in an experimental venue, Ex-Centris, a building more reminiscent of an art museum than a dance hall. Socializing plays a big role in this festival. One can not ignore that MUTEK succeeds in portraying non-ambient music as background fodder for all occasions through its "happy hour" afternoon shows at SAT and its conference reception décor preceding these shows at Ex-Centris.
The show takes place in a lecture hall/meeting/ballroom, which is empty except for the sound equipment, soft lighting, and immaculate pale hardwood floors. They're immaculate enough for almost everyone to sit, lie, and recline on them; and this is the scene that greets MUTEK's first performer, Winnipeg's vitaminsforyou. There's considerable debt paid to Boards of Canada, but also many moments of icy serenity that pay their debt to the bitterly cold Winnipeg winters. I'm picturing snow squalls much in the way that people imagine the Icelandic tundra in Sigur Ros' music.
I'm at least a year behind the times with SND's music, so I was coloured surprised when they didn't launch into an ode to MUTEK 2000 - all clicks and cuts, all the time. Rather, they play highly simplistic beat-driven sound tracks. The beat is there, it may be irregular and there may be the occasional pop and whiz and reverberating high-pitched sound, but not much else. In addition, various sound effects peek through -- metallic, unnerving noises - yet overall, this music is strangely funky. I could listen to it all night.
But that ends the more conventional portion of the evening, as the next two artists are true to the multimedia aspirations of MUTEK. And due to the visual nature of the performances, it is quite difficult to describe. I doubt, however, that I'd want to hear Dioxyde's music separate from the visuals or vice versa. Besides, it would defeat the purpose since their "LoeeFrek" software is designed to produce images that react in real time to the music. The audio is a series of random crackles and rumblings, cut and pasted and looped together in lightning quick fashion. The visual is presented in three parts, each part representing a dimension of space, as the collections of dots begin by forming lines, then move on to shapes, and finally solids. On a plain black screen, the white dots pulse, shake, are pulled apart and drawn together like model imploding and exploding galaxies. It's fascinating, but after an hour ot it, it becomes too anodyne to continue holding my focus. As I'm thinking that, I'm jolted back to full attention by brazen bass notes, as the figures on screen practically explode into a frenzy of patterns completely unrecognizable from their original shapes. I would have hoped for more of this chaos.
My mind is read once more, this time by Mens/Koolwyk. Their performance is a continuum of anxiety and disorientation courtesy of a deep surge of rhythmic noise along with haywire flashes of coloured lines on the big screen, like a TV test pattern gone bonkers. (Un)fortunately, technical difficulty with the projector delayed the start of Mens/Koolwyk's performance, causing many people to leave in frustration and miss out of this brainwashing. The IDM pounding and the subdued high-frequency patterns aren't lobotomizing enough by themselves. It's the icing on top, the wild visuals, that kicks free the final fingers that hold off the descent into madness. It's so intense that I frequently need to look away, and after one such instance the performance ended abruptly, leaving me to wander off, dazed , in the drizzling rain, en route to SAT.
--------
It's electro-pop night at SAT, which is dessert in my book, particularly after the experience from the previous three hours. I hear the synth beat throb of Hellothisisalex as I'm coming up the street, but that's the extent of it, for as I'm walking in the door, they're waving goodbye. The show running late at Ex-Centris is the reason for the mistiming but it's all for the best because I doubt I could take too much of the lightweight stuff in one evening. Nova Huta and Felix Kubin are almost interchangeable except that the former begins with a ten minute monologue about the "uncle" who bequeathed him his first Casio keyboard and all his melodies, and the latter wears shiny clothing and features a funkier bottom end to his music. Otherwise, they both dance around joyfully, share the same equipment, and party like it's 1982. Unlike Closer Musik from last year, who approached retrofuturism with a keen ear for streamlined, minimal composition, Huta and Kubin are only about three minute pop songs. Which is fine in controlled doses.
Tuesday, May 28, 2002
Thoughts on two new albums before my sojourn to Montreal's MUTEK festival:
The Doves "The Last Broadcast" has been hailed as an instant classic. I've only heard about half the record, but there's a lot to like. It's a tremendously ambitious effort, they're throwing about a million different ideas onto the record yet it never comes off as prog wibbling, unfocused, or hastily assembled. They take in ambient noise, grandiose pop, and fuzz rock, sometimes within the same song. Tracks like "Words" recall Suede's "Stay Together", where new melodies crop up every eight bars. "M62 Song" is a blast of stadium-ready rock, and I can already hear album closer "Caught By The River" closing out encores across many continents. They've made an album that will satisfy the Mogwai eardrum blasters set, the Super Furries/Gorkys bonkers psychedelia set, and the Coldplay/Travis overly sensitive set. How many bands can claim that?
And there's also Luke Slater new "Alright on Top". Luke Slater, for those who haven't heard of him, is the colonizing empire of electronic music. He finds a genre of music, swoops right in when he feels like it, sucks up every last bit of worth from the genre and trashes all of the elements that he deems nonessential, and uses these riches to make a fantastic album that completely embarrasses the pithy efforts of his so-called "competitors", humiliating them to the point that nobody could possibly take their music seriously anymore in comparison to his own. Then he moves on and does something else.
"Freek Funk" delved into nearly every existing area of techno and did it all bigger and more beautiful. "Wireless" showed how drab most electro and particularly big beat had become, as he out-funked everyone in sight, was louder and nastier than everybody else, and rocked his way through throbbing harsh electro that hadn't even been invented yet. AND he bloodied himself up on the cover. Now, electro is still big, 80's retro is still big, and he's done it all over again by making the album that locks 1981 Depeche Mode into the studio with 2001 Primal Scream. At first listen, I found it a tad too Europop in places, but I'm usually not partial to vocals. But have patience. As with Slaters' other records, this one starts with dance-y fun and gets progressively rougher and nastier.
The Doves "The Last Broadcast" has been hailed as an instant classic. I've only heard about half the record, but there's a lot to like. It's a tremendously ambitious effort, they're throwing about a million different ideas onto the record yet it never comes off as prog wibbling, unfocused, or hastily assembled. They take in ambient noise, grandiose pop, and fuzz rock, sometimes within the same song. Tracks like "Words" recall Suede's "Stay Together", where new melodies crop up every eight bars. "M62 Song" is a blast of stadium-ready rock, and I can already hear album closer "Caught By The River" closing out encores across many continents. They've made an album that will satisfy the Mogwai eardrum blasters set, the Super Furries/Gorkys bonkers psychedelia set, and the Coldplay/Travis overly sensitive set. How many bands can claim that?
And there's also Luke Slater new "Alright on Top". Luke Slater, for those who haven't heard of him, is the colonizing empire of electronic music. He finds a genre of music, swoops right in when he feels like it, sucks up every last bit of worth from the genre and trashes all of the elements that he deems nonessential, and uses these riches to make a fantastic album that completely embarrasses the pithy efforts of his so-called "competitors", humiliating them to the point that nobody could possibly take their music seriously anymore in comparison to his own. Then he moves on and does something else.
"Freek Funk" delved into nearly every existing area of techno and did it all bigger and more beautiful. "Wireless" showed how drab most electro and particularly big beat had become, as he out-funked everyone in sight, was louder and nastier than everybody else, and rocked his way through throbbing harsh electro that hadn't even been invented yet. AND he bloodied himself up on the cover. Now, electro is still big, 80's retro is still big, and he's done it all over again by making the album that locks 1981 Depeche Mode into the studio with 2001 Primal Scream. At first listen, I found it a tad too Europop in places, but I'm usually not partial to vocals. But have patience. As with Slaters' other records, this one starts with dance-y fun and gets progressively rougher and nastier.
Tuesday, May 07, 2002
I've spent the last couple of months bashing HMV. First, their Boxing Day sale was a joke. Then, they eliminated the Club Cards. All the while, the prices had been steadily climbing over the last couple of years, and with rival Sam's having financial trouble I feared there was no end in sight. I decided to boycott HMV and their shameful overpricing. Indie stores like Soundscapes and Penguin Music have become cheaper than HMV for new CD's -- so why wouldn't I give my money to them? Cheaper is cheaper, and when HMV was it then I spent there proudly, but HMV's greed only encouraged me to contribute more to the indie record shop community.
It was going to take a lot for HMV to regain my trust, but sure enough, they did it with their 3 CDs for $33 sale. We're talking about an AWESOME sale, not just repackaging of jazz, classical, and indistinguishable greatest hits compos, but real variety and selection. Even at $15.99 each, many of these CD's are steals in mint condition (since most were several years old), but at $11 per, it's like finding the most kick-ass selection of used CDs in their original packaging. I went nuts, bought six discs, and I could have easily bought more. Where else can you get almost anything in the Cocteau Twins or Pixies catalogue for eleven bucks?
I'm so satisfied with my purchases that I'm going to discuss them here. With the first three, maybe I can find answers to a question which has been plaguing me lately: why do so many guitar noise bands eventually turn to quiet? Normally, musicians spout off that "we've done loud, now we want to try something different. Loud's been done, we don't feel the need to go back to it". Huh? Perhaps I need to form my own band to experience this. I'm sure lots of aspiring musicians watch Behind The Music, notice the pattern of a) musician works hard to make it, b) musician has fame, fortune, drugs, and debauchery; c) musician falls from grace, d) musician is happy now with a simpler life. And yet, being fully aware of the cycle that will entrap them, they still long to complete it, because they want to experience the highs and lows of b). It's only when you live through your wild period that you no longer desire the wildness.
There's got to be a reason why I never get tired of hearing Slowdive's "Avalyn II" but Neil Halstead did.
SONIC YOUTH -- SISTER. I've never heard the complete album until now. SY peaked so hard with "Daydream Nation", it's not even funny. For my money, SY are at their best when they combine their atonality with something both disturbing and beautiful. They were hitting all the right buttons with EVOL's "Expressway to Yr Skull". The swirling guitars were offsetting, nauseating, and yet the track lurches forward like the best classic rock and roll, only to have the storm subside and make way for a grey, cloudy night of dirge-y, ambient feedback. That classic RnR feeling, mixed with ambient churning and congealed experimentation (as opposed to loose and meandering) drenches "DD" as well, but "Sister" wants to be overtly experimental. Sudden tempo shifts, tunelessness, random noise bursts (symptoms of SY's early, unstructured work) are in abundance. Still, there's a healthy amount of the magic formula toward the second half of the record in tracks such as "Cotton Crown" and "Pacific Coast Highway". After their magnum opus, SY stayed in a holding pattern until "Washing Machine", and then advanced onward with the alluring Can-experiments on their own label, and the near-ambient "A Thousand Leaves".
LUSH -- SEAR EP. The book on Lush states that the more mainstream popularity they achieved, the worse the music became. This ep was their first release, when they were critics darlings/one of the zillions of bands trying to emulate MBV's "Isn't Anything". But Lush were the least noisy of the shoegazing crew. As their career went on, the guitars took more and more prominence, but they ceased sounding like a 4AD band.
This e.p. has a bit of everything (for 1990), swooning vocals a la Cocteaus, jangle-pop, and even a touch of baggy rhythms. The first two qualities remained with them throughout their careers, although they were bitten by the Britpop bug and lost their other-worldliness along the way. They sold out, so what?
MOJAVE 3 -- ASK ME TOMORROW. The tale of Slowdive, their morphology into Mojave 3, and slow return to commercial and critical respectability is one of the most fascinating sagas of pop, I say. As with Loop's transition into Main, they were noise fiends and later found themselves fiddling with near-silence. This album is like watching Rachel, Neil and Ian slowly and painfully crawl out of the smoldering wreckage of their defunct band. The music moves at a glacial page, which is practically the Indy 500 compared to the near cardiac-arrest of Slowdive's "Pygmalion". Not like that's a bad thing. My earlier reference to "smoldering wreckage" was "Pygmalion", not the death of Slowdive. This predated Sigur Ros by years.
As I'm typing this, the insistent humming from the speakers is easily audible. The hum is a different kind of noise, it's a lo-fi noise, but it is noise. The pastoral, rootsy style of the songs doesn't carry the emotional weight of the stark "Here She Comes" (from "Souvlaki"), but few songs do. "Love Songs on the Radio" is epic, but can't compare to the rush of the initial bars of Souvlaki's "40 Days". That's not to say that tracks such as "Pictures" didn't make me melt. The point is that before Mojave 3 was formed, Slowdive had found ways to move one's soul -- both with and without a high decibel count. With Mojave 3, it is only the latter, and even then, I found that the more serene the track, the more hum it contained, the more Pygmalion-esque it was, the better I liked it.
All three bands made their best work while they were still agents of "loud". However, they never exclusively pushed a "louder is better" theme. It may have been the contrast, the crushing highs nuzzling the anodyne lows, the "Here She Comes" leading into "Souvlaki Space Station" that have the strongest effect on listeners. Without that contrast, the quiet bits become tame and lull, rather than the jewels in the eye of the hurricane.
Thus, I have no definite answer to my original question. I need more volume. I haven't yet moved on to part c) in the chain.
It was going to take a lot for HMV to regain my trust, but sure enough, they did it with their 3 CDs for $33 sale. We're talking about an AWESOME sale, not just repackaging of jazz, classical, and indistinguishable greatest hits compos, but real variety and selection. Even at $15.99 each, many of these CD's are steals in mint condition (since most were several years old), but at $11 per, it's like finding the most kick-ass selection of used CDs in their original packaging. I went nuts, bought six discs, and I could have easily bought more. Where else can you get almost anything in the Cocteau Twins or Pixies catalogue for eleven bucks?
I'm so satisfied with my purchases that I'm going to discuss them here. With the first three, maybe I can find answers to a question which has been plaguing me lately: why do so many guitar noise bands eventually turn to quiet? Normally, musicians spout off that "we've done loud, now we want to try something different. Loud's been done, we don't feel the need to go back to it". Huh? Perhaps I need to form my own band to experience this. I'm sure lots of aspiring musicians watch Behind The Music, notice the pattern of a) musician works hard to make it, b) musician has fame, fortune, drugs, and debauchery; c) musician falls from grace, d) musician is happy now with a simpler life. And yet, being fully aware of the cycle that will entrap them, they still long to complete it, because they want to experience the highs and lows of b). It's only when you live through your wild period that you no longer desire the wildness.
There's got to be a reason why I never get tired of hearing Slowdive's "Avalyn II" but Neil Halstead did.
SONIC YOUTH -- SISTER. I've never heard the complete album until now. SY peaked so hard with "Daydream Nation", it's not even funny. For my money, SY are at their best when they combine their atonality with something both disturbing and beautiful. They were hitting all the right buttons with EVOL's "Expressway to Yr Skull". The swirling guitars were offsetting, nauseating, and yet the track lurches forward like the best classic rock and roll, only to have the storm subside and make way for a grey, cloudy night of dirge-y, ambient feedback. That classic RnR feeling, mixed with ambient churning and congealed experimentation (as opposed to loose and meandering) drenches "DD" as well, but "Sister" wants to be overtly experimental. Sudden tempo shifts, tunelessness, random noise bursts (symptoms of SY's early, unstructured work) are in abundance. Still, there's a healthy amount of the magic formula toward the second half of the record in tracks such as "Cotton Crown" and "Pacific Coast Highway". After their magnum opus, SY stayed in a holding pattern until "Washing Machine", and then advanced onward with the alluring Can-experiments on their own label, and the near-ambient "A Thousand Leaves".
LUSH -- SEAR EP. The book on Lush states that the more mainstream popularity they achieved, the worse the music became. This ep was their first release, when they were critics darlings/one of the zillions of bands trying to emulate MBV's "Isn't Anything". But Lush were the least noisy of the shoegazing crew. As their career went on, the guitars took more and more prominence, but they ceased sounding like a 4AD band.
This e.p. has a bit of everything (for 1990), swooning vocals a la Cocteaus, jangle-pop, and even a touch of baggy rhythms. The first two qualities remained with them throughout their careers, although they were bitten by the Britpop bug and lost their other-worldliness along the way. They sold out, so what?
MOJAVE 3 -- ASK ME TOMORROW. The tale of Slowdive, their morphology into Mojave 3, and slow return to commercial and critical respectability is one of the most fascinating sagas of pop, I say. As with Loop's transition into Main, they were noise fiends and later found themselves fiddling with near-silence. This album is like watching Rachel, Neil and Ian slowly and painfully crawl out of the smoldering wreckage of their defunct band. The music moves at a glacial page, which is practically the Indy 500 compared to the near cardiac-arrest of Slowdive's "Pygmalion". Not like that's a bad thing. My earlier reference to "smoldering wreckage" was "Pygmalion", not the death of Slowdive. This predated Sigur Ros by years.
As I'm typing this, the insistent humming from the speakers is easily audible. The hum is a different kind of noise, it's a lo-fi noise, but it is noise. The pastoral, rootsy style of the songs doesn't carry the emotional weight of the stark "Here She Comes" (from "Souvlaki"), but few songs do. "Love Songs on the Radio" is epic, but can't compare to the rush of the initial bars of Souvlaki's "40 Days". That's not to say that tracks such as "Pictures" didn't make me melt. The point is that before Mojave 3 was formed, Slowdive had found ways to move one's soul -- both with and without a high decibel count. With Mojave 3, it is only the latter, and even then, I found that the more serene the track, the more hum it contained, the more Pygmalion-esque it was, the better I liked it.
All three bands made their best work while they were still agents of "loud". However, they never exclusively pushed a "louder is better" theme. It may have been the contrast, the crushing highs nuzzling the anodyne lows, the "Here She Comes" leading into "Souvlaki Space Station" that have the strongest effect on listeners. Without that contrast, the quiet bits become tame and lull, rather than the jewels in the eye of the hurricane.
Thus, I have no definite answer to my original question. I need more volume. I haven't yet moved on to part c) in the chain.
Monday, May 06, 2002
The 1985 American Bandstand 33 1/3 rd anniversary TV special was a blockbuster in my house. The 2002 American Bandstand 50 th anniversary was not. In fact, it was pathetic.
That 33 1/3 show had "important event" tattooed all over it. Three plus hours in length. A room full of musical celebrities and "regulars" (AB dancers) sitting at classy round dinner tables getting interviewed between live performances and video highlight clips. It was less a TV ratings ploy than a high school reunion dinner, with everyone's musical heroes past and present as the invited guests. Motown, fifties teen pop, disco and soul, eighties synth, it was all featured, I was weaned on it, was mad for it, and thus the show was an oft-watched musical yearbook for the whole family.
Besides the somewhat illogical celebration of the 50th anniversary of a show that went off the air in 1989, the show had a vast number of faults.
I can understand the reasoning behind putting the regulars in the front sections. But all those shots of them dancing like glitzed up baby boomers boogieing down at a VH1 divas special? Yeah, they ARE the glitzed up baby boomers that we see boogieing down at VH1 divas specials, but you can't expect that to look cool. I'm all for letting them have their fun when it's the Village People on stage, but it's more plastic than Tupperware when they're doing it for Alanis Morrissette.
The clips of performances from recent American Music Awards (tm Dick Clark) were riveted to the show with a staple gun. Showing Creed and 'NSync performing on a totally different show only accentuates how much times have changed. It doesn't bring the music full circle, from a point starting with the boy toys of yesteryear (Beatles, Anka, Dion) and ending with the boy toys of today (you know who they are). No matter how loud the girls scream for 'NSync compared to how loud they used to scream for the Beatles, we're long past the days of watching teenagers get funky to their fave pop tunes and making dimwitted comments between songs. Those days ended in the late 80's/early 90's, which coincidentally coincides in a rather coincidental way with the rise of "alternative" music, the sickening fall and deafening thud of hair metal, synth-pop, and Paula Abdul (i.e. the stuff that AB was made of during the 80's), and the death of AB itself. By the way, before you counter with Much Music's "Electric Circus", remember that club culture in the 90's was similar to rock and roll in the 50's -- novel to the mainstream, its own fashion style and lingo, and most importantly, perceived as dangerous and subversive to the "grownups". It's a guilty pleasure, it's remarkably daft, and it too will run its course.
Oh, and the supergroup was cool as always, but c'mon, all THREE of the Bangles?
That 33 1/3 show had "important event" tattooed all over it. Three plus hours in length. A room full of musical celebrities and "regulars" (AB dancers) sitting at classy round dinner tables getting interviewed between live performances and video highlight clips. It was less a TV ratings ploy than a high school reunion dinner, with everyone's musical heroes past and present as the invited guests. Motown, fifties teen pop, disco and soul, eighties synth, it was all featured, I was weaned on it, was mad for it, and thus the show was an oft-watched musical yearbook for the whole family.
Besides the somewhat illogical celebration of the 50th anniversary of a show that went off the air in 1989, the show had a vast number of faults.
I can understand the reasoning behind putting the regulars in the front sections. But all those shots of them dancing like glitzed up baby boomers boogieing down at a VH1 divas special? Yeah, they ARE the glitzed up baby boomers that we see boogieing down at VH1 divas specials, but you can't expect that to look cool. I'm all for letting them have their fun when it's the Village People on stage, but it's more plastic than Tupperware when they're doing it for Alanis Morrissette.
The clips of performances from recent American Music Awards (tm Dick Clark) were riveted to the show with a staple gun. Showing Creed and 'NSync performing on a totally different show only accentuates how much times have changed. It doesn't bring the music full circle, from a point starting with the boy toys of yesteryear (Beatles, Anka, Dion) and ending with the boy toys of today (you know who they are). No matter how loud the girls scream for 'NSync compared to how loud they used to scream for the Beatles, we're long past the days of watching teenagers get funky to their fave pop tunes and making dimwitted comments between songs. Those days ended in the late 80's/early 90's, which coincidentally coincides in a rather coincidental way with the rise of "alternative" music, the sickening fall and deafening thud of hair metal, synth-pop, and Paula Abdul (i.e. the stuff that AB was made of during the 80's), and the death of AB itself. By the way, before you counter with Much Music's "Electric Circus", remember that club culture in the 90's was similar to rock and roll in the 50's -- novel to the mainstream, its own fashion style and lingo, and most importantly, perceived as dangerous and subversive to the "grownups". It's a guilty pleasure, it's remarkably daft, and it too will run its course.
Oh, and the supergroup was cool as always, but c'mon, all THREE of the Bangles?
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